We analyze the PlayStation 5: Sony joins the bandwagon of power with a great console | Blog 1 UP
The Chilean writer Robarto Bolaño said, in an unusually personal interview, that what he felt about books was already an obsession: "I buy books and I don't even read them," said the Chilean writer. "I caress them." That ritual of pampering and respect of the author of 2666 He signed a fundamental fact: that, for him, books were not a complement, but the backbone of his life.
Video game lovers feel something similar when the new generations of consoles arrive. A circular event that, like a recurring comet, comes every six or seven years to alter the digital entertainment ecosystem. It is not necessary to play to know that we are facing something special. Just look at the box, take the console out of its packaging, turn it on, and see how the engine sounds to dream of everything inside. This time it could not have brought greater joys. Yesterday the embargoes of Microsoft consoles were lifted. Today the same thing happens with Sony's machine: the Play Station 5. The console war has a new battle, which will decide who is the king of interactive entertainment during the five, six, seven years that this generation will last.
The first is the first. Regarding the design, it must be recognized that Sony's new bet is a martian: the PlayStation 5 moves away from the muted tones of its predecessors, and between the sobriety of the PlayStation 4 and the bright areas of the 3, it opts for this last option. You may think that the excessively modern ends up becoming old, but what cannot be denied is that this design bet pales at the beginning but ends up suffering over time. We are talking about five, six or seven years of scratches, dust accumulated in the plastic folds, problems with the circular base, which is a separate element and supports the device if we want to keep it lying down.
In what the design, in addition to being groundbreaking, does hit the nail on the head, it is in command. When you look at the controls for the PlayStation 4 and 5, there is no question which is more modern; but when they are picked up and felt then there is no question which is better. The vibration of this new dual sense it is exquisite, it spreads over the entire control surface and accompanies with an almost infinite scale of nuances all the movement that games want to convey to us. Not only is it a success, it is the sublimation of many mechanics: the touch screen (the gigantic flat button in the middle of the remote) is bigger and more efficient; Moving motion by turning or tilting it is what the Wii controller once dreamed of being; the firmness of the arms and the precision of the triggers and buttons is unmatched. The Sony machine will cost 499 euros (the version provided by Sony to EL PAÍS) and, although it will not have less powerful versions, there will be a cheaper option that lacks a disk reader (it can only be played with digitally downloaded games) and that will cost 399.
On a technical level, the Japanese console has 825 GB of internal memory and a custom AMD RDNA 2 architecture with 16 GB RAM. That is, as we said yesterday with the Xbox Series X, it is a technically superb console. A year ago no one knew what Teraflops were, but it seems that today they are what measures technical progress. Well, the PS5 has 10.28. Although many do not tell anything (Teraflops are basically the number of mathematical operations per second that they are capable of performing), it can be contextualized by comparing them with the 1.8 that the PS4 reached and the 4.2 that it had in its PRO version. It is an important qualitative leap, which in the playable plane is summarized in better textures, less loading times and a very fluid experience.
Entering the field of games, if we said yesterday that Microsoft had opted for an ecosystem of integrated games, Sony is more conservative in that sense, and its bets are exclusive games. The selling consoles. Knock knocks in the virtual world around which conversations revolve around the world of video games. It is the strategy they have been following for years and the one that has made them the best-selling console. In that sense, the company's commitment to release this console with the Spiderman starring Miles Morales. It is brave because the previous game of Spiderman, of which this is a direct sequel, it was released a year and a half ago, so it is easy to compare, almost in real time, the visuals of a game that squeezed all the power of the PS4 with a game that only scratches the surface of the PS5. The difference, obviously, is not huge, but the lighting, the textures, the very world that the new machine can move give a very hopeful vision of what the PS5 can achieve during this generation that now starts. And that Spiderman it's just an appetizer. When the console reaches the market, on the 19th, it will also be accompanied by remake of the Demon's Souls, one of the most anticipated games by the community gamer. Heavy artillery for the launch.
We, like Bolaño, caress the console, smell it, hear it, feel it. But we also played it, and then we saw that Sony has presented a magnificent, intuitive, comfortable, extravagant but very powerful console with a catalog of games that promises to be second to none. Sony has taken a step forward in terms of the power of its machine. And we players rejoice as we swing between the skyscrapers of New York playing as Spiderman.
